James H. Snowden

“ A religion that could not stand the most searching and pitiless light of scholarship could not live. Science kills pagan faiths as with a stroke of lightning. But the gospel lives, because wise men go to Bethlehem and find there, not fiction, but fact. It welcomes and inspires the profoundest science and philosophy. God in his Word is not afraid of God in his works. The tallest intellects in all these centuries have bowed at the side of this manger. ”

“ A telescope cannot see an angel, though millions of them may be flying across its field of vision. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. In our blind materialism we need to have our eyes opened that we may know that this universe, which often seems so empty and dark to us, is a blazing sea of spiritual splendor in which burning suns float as black specks and which is thronged with troops of angels that do the will of God and wait on us. ”

“ Sin has wrought such disorder in this world that the thought of spirit visitors frightens us and heaven itself must not come too near. There are great reasons for fear in this darkened world, but the coming of Jesus into it is not one of them. His only mission is to release us from the bondage and bitterness of sin and let us out into the glorious liberty and joy of the sons of God. And Christ has in a marvelous degree cast fear out of the world and poured joy through all its channels, as the sun disperses the night and spills its splendor over hills and vales. ”

“ Why did God not rather give some invention or discovery or piece of knowledge that would revolutionize and bless the world? Would he not have done enormously more for mankind if in the first century of our era he had given them the printing press, or the steam engine, or the electric light? May there not yet be waiting for us some invention or knowledge that will work wonders beyond anything we have dreamed and shower material comforts on the world? ”

“ Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person, and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the birth of a Cæsar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon the Christ-child as it lay in its manger, we would have been disappointed and thought that nothing extraordinary had happened. ”

“ On that morning the Judean shepherds had a story to tell which all they that heard it wondered at and which is still the wonder and song of the world. The birth of Jesus is absolutely the greatest event of all time. Whatever view is taken of him he has become the Master of the world. Christ has created Christendom, silently lifting its moral level as mountains are heaved up against the sky from beneath. The coming of such a unique and powerful personality into the world is an infinitely greater wonder than the discovery of a new continent or the blazing out of a new star in the sky. ”

“ Is there anything more beautiful in the Bible, or in all literature? The imagination of painter or poet may well kindle at the scene. There are the wondering mother, the worshiping wise men bowing down, the shining fragrant gifts, and in the midst, as the center and glory of it all, the young Child. This Child, which even in its infancy subordinates mother and wise men and gold to itself, is indeed a King. Worship is the expression of reverence, and reverence is the root of all worth and divineness in life. ”

“ Sin is the disease that poisons all our blood and blights our physical and moral and spiritual health and happiness. Cut this ugly tree up by the roots and all its scarlet fruits and poisonous leaves will wither; cure this disease and our human world will be transformed into a new Paradise of God. A Saviour is the supreme need of the world, and his birth was news good enough to bring singing angels to earth and fill all the centuries with song. ”

“ God has put many stars in our sky to lead us on to Christ. The stars themselves are as vocal with divine messages as though every one of them were a golden bell hung in the dome of the night to ring out some good news from God. The Bible is a great constellation in which every promise and precept is a star, and all its stars stand over Christ. All the Christian centuries are starred with events and achievements that point to Christ as King. ”

“ God made no mistake, then, he gave us no small and common gift, but he did his best and gave the world the greatest possible Christmas Gift when this Child was born. All the grass in the world came from one seed, all the roses from one root, and all the redeemed that shall at last populate heaven and fill it with praise throughout eternity shall be saved by the grace and clad in the beauty of this Child. ”

“ Every evil thought we cherish and every evil deed we do are so many swords we thrust into his cradle. Herod has a long and numerous progeny, and we may find them close to our own door and even in our own hearts.
The star appears to have been invisible to the wise men while they were in Jerusalem—in that guilty city, which in its pride thought it had a monopoly of divine favor, the stars of faith were eclipsed by a worldly spirit—but when they emerged from the city the star once more led them on and stood over where the young Child was. ”

“ This chorus first ascribes glory to God, for all things good and beautiful come from him and express his glory, as all rays of daylight shoot from the sun and are its splintered splendor. The gift of Christ manifests the glory of God in that it displays the divine wisdom in devising the plan of salvation, the divine power in executing it, and the divine love as its mighty motive. The glory of God, that streams through the heavens as through a dome of many-colored glass, is concentrated and burns with the interest brightness in the person of his Son. ”

“ So the same gospel that made angels sing and wise men worship and started good news out over the world, created consternation and trouble up in Herod’s palace and in his city. Christ came to give peace and joy, but his gospel is a sword to some. The good man’s presence is always the bad man’s condemnation and stirs hatred in his heart. Every good influence that falls upon us, according as we use it, brings either more joy or trouble, and the gospel itself is either a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death. ”

“ In an increasing degree Jesus is drawing all men into his service, and they are laying their treasures at his feet. The gold of the wise men was only the first gleam of the shining heaps of wealth that his followers are now piling on the altar of his service. This process will go on until the whole world will lie at his feet.
Every generation sends a more numerous company to Bethlehem. With every century worshipers arrive from more distant lands. From every quarter of the circumference of the globe paths now run to the manger of this Child, worn deep by millions of feet. ”

“ These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to be visible. ”

“ How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and grind them up and melt them in our crucibles; we fling our nets through all space and catch the stars; and when we can find nothing more to measure and analyze we think we have found and explained all. ”

“ The weary world wants one who can go to the root of its unrest, and it is finding out that this can be done by him who is mighty to save people from their sins. All who put their trust in him are blessed with purity and peace. In this great world, lost in sin and beaten upon by infinite mystery, there is only one voice that comes like music across our life with power to cleanse and comfort us; and this is the Voice whose infant cry was first heard in Bethlehem. ”

“ Pagan achievements, also, “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” were roots to this same tree of preparation for the coming of Christ, though they knew it not. Greece with all the glories of its philosophy and art showed that the world never could be saved by its own wisdom; and all the laws and legions of Rome were equally impotent to lift it out of the ditch of sin. Neither a brilliant brain nor a mailed fist can save a lost world. Yet both Greece and Rome made positive contributions to the preparation for Christ. ”

“ But an ancient prophet, while noting its comparative insignificance, had yet put his finger on this tiny point on the map and pronounced upon it a blessing that caused it to blaze out like a star amidst its rural hills. “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” And so proud Jerusalem was passed by, and this supreme honor was bestowed upon the humble village.
Great men, as a rule, are not born in cities. ”

“ The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing, which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and in its day was a great wonder. ”

“ Divine glory and human good will are related as cause and effect. When men get right with God they at once get right with one another, as the center of a circle, when truly located, pulls every point on the circumference into its proper place in the curve; but when men are at variance with God they are at enmity among themselves. Divine glory is the sun shining in the heavens; human good will is a garden and orchard all abloom with flowers and laden with fruit. ”

“ No one can ever save the world by winning over the rich and the great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the spire’s gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with Cæsar, but with shepherds, and then in three hundred years a Christian Cæsar sat on the throne. ”

“ What a surprise was this manger to their thoughts and shock to their feelings. Were ever deep-seated, long-cherished hopes treated with more cruel irony? But God’s ways are not as our ways. Christ was brought into the world at the very point where he could get the deepest strongest hold upon it and most powerfully swing it starward from the dust. He was born among neither the very rich nor the very poor, but in the great middle class at the center of gravity of humanity, by lifting which he would lift the world. ”

“ Furthermore, we would need to pull out of human character and life all the strands of purity and peace, of faith and love and hope, that have been woven into the hearts and lives of men by the hand of Christ. We would have to stop all our preaching and praying and hush every Christian hymn and song. We would have no word of salvation from sin, no comfort in trouble, and no hope as we look out into the beyond. The world would lose its Light and be wrapped in night. ”

“ It is a simple fact that all our material progress works little improvement in morals. At the hour Christ was born Rome had an amazing material civilization, blazing with splendor, but all the more rapidly was it rotting at the core.
But a child has in it the possibility of growth and of imparting regenerating ideas and a new life to the world. Sir Isaac Newton did not give any money or material gift to the world, but he gave it scientific ideas and a scientific spirit, and in giving it this he raised the intellectual level of the world and gave it the power of making millions of money. ”

“ The gospel still works from beneath; going down into the slums of Christian cities; working among the poor and degraded of heathen lands; and seeking the lowest tribes of men from whom have been defaced almost the last vestige of humanity and restoring them to the image of God. Christ is saving the world as a whole. He is not slicing the loaf of society horizontally, cutting off the upper crust, but he is slicing it vertically from top to bottom.
How wonderful is the simplicity and beauty of this gospel that shepherds are drawn by it. It takes some brain to read Plato. ”

“ Yet we are not to suppose that our age is the only one that has had its wonders. Other times had theirs also, only these old-time wonders have become familiar to us and ceased to be wonderful; but in their day they were marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the sixteenth century. ”